I've seen this discussion come up on HN a few times so I think people may find Tyler Cowen's talk on this subject interesting.

Some interesting bits of information:

- People do work less to some extent, but the reduction in working hours is concentrated in teen years and old age (65+).

- People seem to like work, will continue their jobs even if they win the lottery.

- Rich people (top 1%) now work longer hours than poorer people.

It all boils down to the "reserve army of labour".

If you're replaceable and there aren't many better options then you can be pressured to work longer hours.

Unfortunately automation is just increasing that "reserve army", rather than reducing working hours across the board.

One thing that never comes up in these discussions that seems very relevant to me is the preferences of women.

Maybe it is just from my own limited experience but women seem to vastly prefer dating/marrying men who have fulltime jobs, even if those men are independently wealthy and could get by without work.

Not to say there aren't women out there of the gold-digger persuasion, but at least amongst the upper-middle class women I grew up around work and the willingness to work is seen as an important character trait.

Can't watch the video but comment anyway.

When you work a 15-hour week, there's always somebody who got 7 times more accomplished than you did that week.

Unless they were a 10x performer or something, then it's even more ambitious by comparison.

It is quite frustrating to realize that by the logic of "revealed preferences", my own behavior will be used as a data point that I prefer to work 40 hour weeks, when in fact I would very much prefer to work 15 hours. It's just, I don't actually get that option. Companies want to hire people with "passion" for "challenge". You are supposed to pretend that making your employer rich is the #1 desire in your life; and if you don't, you don't get the job; and if you ask for the possibility to work part-time, you make it quite obvious you are not that passionate. Even companies that advertise having part-time positions mean it as an option for women with small kids, who are expected to switch to full-time as soon as possible; so even if you apply for the supposedly part-time job positions, as a man you can't really get them. (I am not an American, so I can't try to sue them for discrimination.) And yes, I have a preference for working full-time over being unemployed, because I have bills to pay and children to feed, duh. But it drives me crazy to see that this is interpreted as me not really wanting to reduce my work to 15 hours a week. Give me that option (with the proportional, not insane, reduction in salary), and I will gladly take it!

(Imagine a parallel reality where working 9 or 10 hours a day is the norm in 2020. A person who strongly wants to work 8 hours a day, i.e. a perfectly normal person in our reality, would have a problem finding a job in that reality, because they would be perceived as a slacker. Even if the employer doesn't get significantly more output from 9 hours over 8 hours a day, this is a red flag, and why hire a weirdo if you have other options.)

I am not really convinced by the fact that super rich people work long hours voluntarily. If you own the company, so you are your own boss, your working conditions are not really comparable with the rest of the company. You decide what you do, you decide when you do it, you decide how you do it, you decide when you take a break. You go to a trip, maybe across the world, and you call it a business trip, just because you met some of your equals. It is more similar to average person's hobby that to average person's work. You probably have your office room, where you can close the door.

Of course vacations are stressful, because during vacations people do crazy things, trying to cram as much experience as they can into the few days of continuous free time. That doesn't mean that all free time is inherently more stressful than work. Are weekends more stressful? Are evenings and nights the most stressful parts of the day? I suppose not, otherwise that would likely be used in the lecture as a strong argument in favor of long work-weeks. Working shorter work-weeks would be more like having longer weekends than like being on a vacation.

By the way, if people love spending lots of time at work so much they do it voluntarily even if they are retired or super rich, then what's wrong with UBI? I mean, if the hypothesis that people genuinely prefer long work-weeks is true, then UBI presents zero risk for the economy, right?